Speaker 1 0:04
Funny. Welcome to this week's episode of midlife a f, where we're gonna be talking about a few QC subjects, we'll see where we get to my intention is for us to talk about fear, the fear of making a commitment. My intention is for us to talk about abundance and scarcity. And which kind of leads into the same thing, actually. And then I also wanted to talk about the sheer bloody monotony of stuff as we start to head back into the world of work and their blue blood there. And what we can do to try and keep ourselves in a place where we're not feeling activated. All right, my darlings, we'll see how we get to I managed to split it up into a couple of parties, but go do it over to me.
Speaker 1 1:33
Okay, so I'm gonna have to keep a bit of an eye on the time on this one. Because I've got a lot to say, we've been having so many great conversations in my membership group be the lighthouse, about what comes up for us in the new year. And I know I've done quite a few webinars in the past on perfectionism and judgment, and how that keeps us stuck. And I had one beautiful client who I've been working with on and off for two years, probably. Which, again, you know, is something we really need to talk to, because it's not always a straight line, this journey and sometimes it's particularly if we have we have an inner belief that we are the problem. And we need fixing. And this is why one of my first posts of the year on social in the on the socials was about what if you're not broken? How about we start there. And I'm really gonna go against the grain this year of what I'm seeing in social media and what is triggering me slightly. And I know I always know when something triggers me, we know that when something triggers us, right, that it's more about us than the thing. And I know for me, it's been very, very slow. And I always feel really bad when I say this, because people are like, Oh my god, are you okay? I'm like, Yeah, of course I'm okay. Okay, I'm just a middle aged neurodivergent human looking after a bunch of neurodivergent babies who are 15 and 13 going through the eship us going through our shit and that means that quite a lot of time and we're tired. And you know, it's so interesting for me because I am spiritually the opposite and I'm sick of kind of pretending when I was drinking God, I was holding that shit together. I like I would run I think 40s As the year for running Yeah. For your 40s I think for me having after I had the babies moved out to Australia you know, I was drinking but I wasn't I don't think I was drinking excessively but then I like my whole friendship group drank excessively but I was fit if I can fit on. And I could get up in the morning and go for a run I'd run 10k Twice week 15 to 20 on a on a Sunday didn't love that so much. It was more of a 10 15k girl that was quiet but Alicia could find 10k Without even batting an eyelid of a morning and then go to work. Or when I've been drinking the night before although a lot of the time it was only drinking at the weekend Thursday Friday Saturday you know that special long week but it's been an I'm really keen to sort of I feel that so many of the new year's resolutions in this whole like new year new me. It all comes from the same idea that we're broken that we need fixing. And I've been posting a lot about this this week. It's like as part of the reason that this whole A lie that we make up about when you stop drinking is best thing I ever did. But it's not been a wonder drug, you know, it's not, it's not made me thinner fitter, it's actually not given me more time, it's not made me more productive. It's done so much more than that. It's, it's, it's, it's introduced me to who I actually am as a human. And it's forced me to rest. It's allowed me to be there for my kids. Really, they're like present, like, really present. It's allowed me to do the work to understand that I put myself away when I was very young, because I thought that I was wrong, which is the story of so many drinkers neurodiverse, or not neurodiverse complex, PTSD, or, you know, just what people consider themselves to be highly sensitive people, you know, we all usually have a similar story that we didn't sort of fit in. And so we adjusted ourselves, so we could, and, you know, all the learnings that I have around trauma, and everything is like, you know, it's what happens to us in the early years of our life, that kind of sets the scene for how our nervous system is going to be, you know, not including, you know, and that's not even including all the sort of intergenerational stuff and our genes and, you know, everything. But coming into this or thinking that we need to be more, more productive, skinnier, fitter have more time. And I'm not gonna lie, that's exactly why I went into it. I went into it because I was like, was two reasons. First of all, it was like, it was always, it's always been about losing weight for me. Even though when I look back at pitches have been out, like in my 40s, I like to got so talking about. So for me, it's been a journey as well into self acceptance, I've learned about intuitive eating, I've learned I've not been on a diet for three years, I have now I'm sort of trying to learn general nutrition, I've really changed my attitude to my body. I found out I was neurodivergent, I've managed to get my kids diagnosed, I've got myself diagnosed, I found out that I was ADHD. Now I found out I'm autistic. And I'm sinking into the real me. And I think one of the things I want to change a lot in how I mark it and how I talk about this work is this isn't, you know, this isn't about we stopped drinking. And then we get on to the next thing or we take a break from drinking and we get on to the next thing. I was talking to a client about it. client that I've been working with for quite a while and she was just asking me, so how does this work in terms of you know, this sort of work work we do for becoming alcohol free? And I was like, well, it's not really about that. It's not really about how does this work? For becoming alcohol free? And
Unknown Speaker 8:24
then we're on to the next thing. How do we do this? How do we make it happen?
Speaker 1 8:29
It's it to me the work that we do, when becoming and maintaining an alcohol free existence is the work that we do to be in the world. The two separate to me, it's not like we get we do the alcohol free bit and then we move on. It's that to be happily alcohol free, we have to do work on ourselves. So that because I think once you start to uncover the potential of you, without booze and without numbing and without running away, and hiding and escaping. That's where your growth comes from. And you know, I remember when my kid my kid started her sport, her new his new school, sorry. And I remember the teacher saying to us, you know, so many kids who come here haven't been able to get on with like regular schools. It's an alternative school. And they were like the kids to have to when they get back into it, and it starts to become their choice and they start to be in, they want to learn, they want to come to the classes. It's not that they don't want to learn. And I think that's the same with us as human beings. We want to grow, we want to evolve, we want to change we want to move forward. You know,
Speaker 1 10:06
my apologies, I got completely interrupted there by my kids coming into the house. So I apologize if I've completely forgot what I was saying. So we're talking about hope, fear abundance, we were talking about the idea that taking a break from alcohol become being alcohol free is, you know, something that you do, and then you move on to the next thing. And the idea is that we do it because it's going to be going to lose weight, we're going to be more productive, we're gonna be, and I was writing about this on the, on the socials and just saying how it's just not being my reality. In fact, you know, there's so much that hasn't gone that way. And in fact, I'm really glad that that's the case. And it's unpicking some of those characteristics that we took on as children in order to fit into the world, you know, this whole idea that we have to be productive. I mean, half the time when I speak to clients, the productivity thing is the reason why people drink. There's so many shirts, I have to do this, I mustn't forget to do that. I need to do this. And unless it's done, I cannot not do this. Otherwise, the world will fall apart, it will all descend into chaos. If I let my house be untidy if I let my garden be untidy if I don't send my doom packed lunches for my kids, if my kids aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing, and there's all this pressure and stress, to do all this kind of impossible stuff that we think everybody else is doing. And we wonder why the fuck we can't do it. I was laughing with my husband. A couple of weeks ago, we're walking, going for a walk. And we were saying, it's so funny, isn't it when reflecting back to when our kids were little? And before we knew they were autistic and ADHD, which we had absolutely no idea. Yeah, all the way through primary school. And we were saying it if we just used to think, How can everybody else do this fire to go out to their house? How can they just they just go to school. And people are free. Like, it's just, you know, oh, my goodness, I'm I can my kids, they're up and they're out. And, and, you know, I think one of the things to really know, if you're a person who doesn't have kids who are struggling, please know that you're showing off about how you're going amazing. Your kids are doing stuff like tidying and getting up and going. very triggering for us all to stick around. I'm kidding, of course, you shouldn't jam your light down your dampen your light in order to to make the rest of us feel better. Because we know when in reality, the only reason we're being triggered is because we're making meaning of the fact that other people can do something, and we can't and we're judging ourselves because of that. And equally, we're judging ourselves by society's standards. And therein lies the fucking problem, right? The society standard, you know, we have our motto wrote his book, The Myth of normal as one of the reasons I started studying unto Gabor. And can I just say, for my 125 case studies for my Compassionate inquiry training this week, and that check God that's been that has been such a hard slog, I've got loads more to do before I finally submit my, all my final bits, there's little tests and all sorts of forms and little test is eight tests I need to do and how a lot of other stuff. But that doesn't have to be until the 19th of February. So celebrating that I am almost there. And I'm trying to promise myself that I will not do because I really really wanted to somatic experiencing with Peter Levine I really want he wants to do for internal family systems. But I really really really need a break from education because I've been doing education since I got since 2019 When I started my counseling and psychotherapy postgrad. And I just forget each time I'm like, I really want to learn about that. It's like the shiny eyed and then I end up burnt out for Christmas which is
Speaker 1 14:26
okay, so we were talking about the entwined nests. And we were talking about and most the things that I'm really going to change in my approach to how I talk about this work because it is different and like for me, for example, I took a year, probably a good year of trial of taking breaks and not being happy with my success. I'm really hating every minute of them and then I found that this naked mind, I did the pause which is just you know, being aware of your drinking which is what I I've got my awareness worksheets which are on which should be in the links of the show notes here. And they're also in my, on my bio on my LinkedIn profile. And sorry, my cat is scratching right by the microphone. I hope that's not too awful. Keeping it brief, otherwise, we don't do these things you see. But yeah, my commitment to you is not to do any more education other than like little short courses with paper or something like that. I have to do professional development. But honestly, I'm a sucker for education, because we love to learn and we love to grow. And that takes me back to what we were talking about. We were talking about growth when we were talking about how, you know, it's the learning, it's like, it's learning that, you know, we can ask for what we want, that we are the fucking golden goes that the whole world collapsed without us. But we go into not drinking, thinking that will come out of 30 days. And, you know, we'll be jumping out of bed and we'll be running down and don't get me wrong, probably half the people are but a taste for nothing. If it's middle aged neurodivergent women, which is a lot of people who are drinking, you probably not. Because you've already so exhausted because we use our core to push through, right? That was another thing. I was talking to another one of my clients. Today we were having a giggle because I said I wasn't gonna post this thing on social media about me being really pissed off that had to clean the fridge. Because I hate hate with a passion. Housework. Like I don't mind doing it. You know, like, oh, let's work on particular area, and to focus on that hyper focus on that. But just the drudgery of it. Which I know is a lot of the reason why a lot of women drink and then suddenly when you when you sort of become I think it yeah, when when you start losing your research and go into the perimenopause years 40s 50. That nurturing hormone is the only thing that kept you going doing all this shit, because it's, it's life or sucking, isn't it? And I know that's speaking from such a privileged position, because of course, you know, not everybody. Most, you know, a lot of people all over the world would be working really long hours and trying it you know, all this stuff. Saying that I worked really long hours. But that's my own issue. But anything over and above that, now, as a pre menopausal woman, it's just it's just too much. And so what happens when a lot of perimenopause, a woman stopped drinking is this sudden exhausted, and is suddenly not using alcohol to push through their nervous system. And so all of that pushing through of nervous system, which we do for years and years, and years and years, suddenly our body goes, Oh, thank God, we don't have to do this anymore. We can actually start to power down and rest and repair from all of the pushing through our nervous system, ignoring our needs. And again, this comes from, you know, for years and years of women and I don't know a single woman who's not been on a diet suppressed her food and they eat so the body thinks it's going into starvation mode, it thinks it's in famine. So then it starts to hold on to foods and then we start to, you know, when are menopause and all our hormones come in? Of perimenopause. I'm still in perimenopause, unfortunately. Depending on the metaphors, like I've been talking about this stuff for years now. When's it coming? My friend? Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 19:02
Yeah, okay. So we're talking about fear. We were talking about the idea that what we think are called taking a photograph was going to be like and what it actually is like, and we were talking about this concept of an alcohol free life and what that means, and for me, it's actually it's a life. So it's not an alcohol free life as such. I call it midlife AF because it's life, it's back at me, I'd like alcohol free. And yes, I am very, very freaking proud that I'm alcohol free. I'm really, really glad that I don't have that shit in my life anymore. And I cannot believe that I am. I'm so happy that I got myself out of that. And I look around at you know, my husband, my friend and my friends who still in there, and I just think oh, that's that must be really tough. So just so it does, and this is the beauty and this is why I get so passionate about this work that I do because I believe that the way that I teach and the way that I've learned from the my mentors, and the things that I've pulled together from all the As places are about creating a life that's not about missing out or feeling sorry for yourself, because you don't drink, it's about creating a lovely life you'd love without drinking, and choosing not to drink as opposed to having not to drink. You know, it's a choice like I make a choice. And to me, I would never want to drink, I can kind of imagine putting that stuff in my mouth now, whereas I was an absolute. I was just, I love booze so much. It was like my favorite thing. And of course, it helps that I work in it. And that's probably one of the reason why I decided to work in is it really sort of like hamster in but I do really remember the time it clicked for me. And it clicks for people, you know, all different types of see it. And also different things click at different times, and we will get into this perfectionist thing of, you know, oh, I've had a data point, I've had a slip, oh, well, that's it's all fat. Let's go back to the beginning. Or then I've done my 30 days, and I don't feel amazing. And I'm not like jumping up, oh, well, let's go don't worry about it was not so it's not about that. This is about me so much more than that. It's about coming home to self creating a life inside of you and your body. And I don't mean that from a nutritional physical. Now all those things are important, but they're not as important as having a safe place at home in your heart in your body. A safe place for you to land to nurture all those younger parts of you that you left behind. And to tell them it's okay, you know, when they're scared, when they don't want to do something when it's frightening when they don't know how to. And they want to do something else. They want to have a drink, they want to escape they want to know, and learning. That skill that we learn as a person who doesn't drink and in my groups is all about learning through grounding through centering, through being with ourselves through learning how to feel into emotions, learning how to start to feel, especially for us neuro divergence, we have Alex Damia have really really struggled with interoceptive awareness. You know, it's about learning how to notice things in our body, you know, people have had trauma as well. So we're How can we safely go into our bodies? How do we do that gently? How do we ease in and out of it like a DJ, you know, on a DJ set and, and that's what we teach. That's what we work with do in my groups. And we do it every single week. And when I'm working with people on a one to one basis, we do it at the start of every session. We go to ourselves, we go to our bodies, and it's okay if you're not in your body. And that is like nothing's bad. Nothing's wrong. It's okay. It's all okay. Yeah, if you're disassociated I am all the time. Yeah, that's how I That's my protective mechanism. It keeps me going keeps me functioning when things are crazy around me or things or a fact, allows me to keep going. So there's loads of always got reason everything we do got a reason, especially those parts of us that want to drink. They're very clever brains very clever. So probably gone a bit too long or do. But the last thing I want to talk about slightly and we'll talk about skanks is really important, is this idea of abundance versus scarcity. And for me, this is the fundamental part of everything. And it's rediscovering that essence of self, you know, that part of us was born into this world be all that we the potential, you know, this one, a magnificent, incredible life. And by that I don't mean big.
Unknown Speaker 23:37
I just mean real, truthful. Genuine here authentic. In service, in growth in community, in, in reality. And your people asked me to explain my What do I mean by it, and it is in every single teaching, it's in Buddhism, it's in
Speaker 1 24:07
the Christian religions, it's in the Arabic versions it's in. It's in Greek mythology. It's in Roman philosophy, and mythology. It's, it's everything. And this is this idea that we are love. And when we come from a place of love, which to me and I was thinking of the words, it's like openness, it's like leaning in, it's like surrendering. It's like accepting all words that I would have shunned as a younger person, because they sound passive, but the opposite is true. They're not passive. They're actually very, very active. And the opposite of that, which is what I and the teachers that I've learned from and creating my own I practice with is the scarcity, which to me is what the AAA approach is by Ken again, no offense to any AAA, there's so much involved in that, that is so good. But for me that idea that you're, there's something wrong with you, and that you have a problem. And that, you know, the devil is doing push ups outside your door. That doesn't work for me. And where I've, I've known quite a few people now who've been, you know, people who don't drink, but who've done it through AAA, and who wished that they could drink at all times, they're in resistance they're in, you know, they're in deprivation, but they're just very strong people, a lot of them like most of us, humans, or women, no women assigned at birth female assigned at birth, neurodivergent, humans have had some kind of eating disorder. So we're very good at control. We can put things away for years. We can do that we can be very good at control, we can be in with resistance for years, and we think it's working for us, it's not working for us. Because we always go back to the thing. You're always go back to the thing when you're in resistance. At some point, it will get too much the willpower will be too strong, too hard. It's too hard. Because willpower uses energy, it uses physical energy, they've done research on it, it shows there's an energy that happens and the energy gets depleted. And so the way that I teach and the way that I work with humans is that we we are about the tuning in, we are about accepting we are about being with ourselves in the discomfort. And we've talked about this before that we know that as children because we weren't always picked up when we needed to be because we were left to cry because for no one's fault, right? This is the whole thing that let go of fault, folks just irrelevant, right? We are where we are. No one's to blame. It's just civilization. It's just life's how it is. But we learned we never learned to hold ourselves in our distress. We never learned that payments gonna go away. We never learned that someone was coming. So as a baby, we thought a small child we think No one's ever coming. Pay pains never going away and and our job as grown as fucking humans, whose actual nature is nurturing is to parent ourselves through that is to learn how to do this ship called life. Yeah. And to go back and take all those precious little souls that we left along the way we rejected and bring them in and give them a bloody good cuddle. And yes, they'll make mistakes, because they're only little in their learning. You know, I always use the chessboard analogy, like the chess computer. He doesn't like beat himself up for making a mistake. He goes back, he puts that into the database and he moves forward. The only problem they have in this journey is if you don't look at what the what the problem is. So that's another thing that so you know, so for me, it's like, no judgement, no shame, no blame, I don't believe that a data point is a minor. I don't believe you go back to the beginning. That's bullshit. If you kept as you just keep counting days Why would you go back to the beginning, that's perfection is nonsense. I'm not gonna be able to do proper fear and perfectionism in this episode, I think you're gonna have to do it. Another one today is a really important one, because it often stops us starting. And that's a problem. And then when we have a little slip up, or a data point in purchases, like whether we give up now, once you've got off the horse, it's like, it's really hard to get back on again, because it takes that sort of a certain amount of energy to start. And so it's almost like you seem to have a data point examine it. What went wrong, what happened? What because all you're doing is you're learning like the chess machine, right? Like a baby learning to walk you're learning. You know, I wasn't able to cope with growth mindsets, what our kids learned in school, I wasn't able to cope with this. I was it was easier for me to drink than to manage this. Or I didn't feel like I had the resources to do this. So great. Why are we being sad about that? That's brilliant information. Now we can go and plan for the next time we can work out what was it? You know, was it that you when your partner is dispersed? You were feeling frightened? What was it? No, that was my experience. And you know, I was coming from, you know, when my partner raised his voice husband, you know, I was responding to him in the body of his eight year old child. That's really useful information. And then when that happens again, instead of expecting stuff from him He's on his own journey. So its own shit out. I can say to my little eight year old child, hey, hey, hey, I get why you're really frightened. But it's okay. You're not eight. We're here in this room now and I'm here with you. And we're going to be okay. We're gonna do this together. Yeah, it's gonna be fine, you're gonna be alright, it's fine that you feel scared, I'm here. I'm not gonna make your bed. I'm not gonna tell you, uh, well, I'm going to love you. And we're going to do this together. And this is the journey I'm gonna have fucking fantastic is that it just blows my mind. Anyway, I'll leave you there. Lots and lots of love, you know, all my usual stuffs in the notes. I highly recommend if you're not on the journey yet, do the visualization, the Northstar visualization, it's free. That's where you start to imagine what your life would be like when you finish a break or whatever it is your your goal. And then also do the awareness worksheets. Wherever you are the awareness worksheets are the bee's knees. That's what I did before I took my final break from booze when I decided to do a year. And we'll talk about fear next time, we'll definitely talk about fear. She says that, and I'll probably forget, but I hope a lot of that fear because there's so many things that are keeping us stuck about fear that has to do with perfectionism. And we just we really need to get out of this all or nothing thinking and just say look, the if the goal is awareness, we can't fuck up. The only way we can fuck up is if we're ignoring what's going on. So we go yeah, we're gonna go these days. Yeah, we're gonna turn the switch off. But at the same time, we have a data point. We're not going to go back to the beginning. But you know, what's up flash sec, sec, Clutha and ashes and with ourselves, you know, I can't remember what the name of that thing is. You do that not that you do that, like, you know, Persia. I don't know what it's called. I'm thinking of that. And now I'm gonna do all those weird ones, right? There's a book and the guy starts off and he's like whipping himself as lashes lashes. I'm gonna stop there. But there's so many things around fear. So let's make fear the next one. And I remember have a brilliant way my darlings. It's beautiful to be with you. Please, please, please send me messages can be a review. If you can go on to Apple or Spotify. And say how much you love the body. If you love it. That'd be amazing. If you don't just move on. And just come and let me know what you'd like us to talk about. You know, send me an email Mr. hoboes and coaching.com Yeah, that's it. Fine.
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